Hands-On with Lenovo Star Wars: Jedi Challenges

Star Wars: Jedi Challenges is an amazing augmented reality (AR) experience that will delight Star Wars fans young and old. More to the point, it’s technically impressive, offering a wider field of view than the much more expensive and cumbersome HoloLens.

Ruh-roh, Microsoft.

Granted, Star Wars: Jedi Challenges is a standalone product, for now, though it’s not hard imagining Lenovo expanding its use to new games. But let’s not get bogged down in the future, which as any Star Wars fan knows is always in motion. Because the reality of today is quite excellent.

Star Wars: Jedi Challenges is an immersive AR experience that combines an AR headset, a faithfully-created lightsaber, and a cute little beacon that defines the play area. You’ll need a smartphone, of course—it works with both Android and iPhone—and a bit of room to move around in; say about eight feet by eight feet.

Lightsaber and beacon

Set up is a bit cumbersome. In addition to having to remove your phone’s case, you need to navigate through a multi-step wizard, insert batteries in two devices (the beacon and the lightsaber) and make sure your phone and the included AR helmet are fully-charged. (This thing will kill your phone’s battery quickly.) Just getting the phone slotted into the headset correctly requires a bit of gymnastics.

Lenovo provides all the cables anyone will need, but getting the phone in there is difficult

But once you do get it set up, Star Wars: Jedi Challenges is magic.

Those who have been dreaming of unleashing their inner Jedi—as I have, literally for 40 years—will gasp with delight as the holographic images fill the viewscreen inside the helmet. To be clear, this is AR, not VR: That means you can see the room around you, so there’s no worry about tripping into the Christmas tree under which this wonderful gift might have been waiting. And it means that holographic images are superimposed on top of reality, so to speak, just as they are with HoloLens.

To answer your question, yes, you really can see your enemy’s entire body

Well, not just as they are with HoloLens. These holograms are, in fact, superior, with an obviously wider field of view, especially in the vertical. This means particular sense for the main fighting game, where you take on an increasingly difficult lineup of enemies that range from ineffectual battle droids all the way up to various masters of the Dark Side. In this game, your vertically oriented opponents are nicely overlayed over the room in which you’re fighting.

Interaction with the bundled lightsaber—which is a wonderful reproduction of Luke Skywalker’s lightsabre—is likewise impressive, though the hologram blade was often a bit “off” from the real lightsaber. No matter: I began swinging this thing around with abandon, slashing at droids and other enemies and repelling their laser blasts. Seriously, it’s amazing.

There are a few other experiences in the app, including a laser chess game from the original Star Wars—“let the Wookie win”—and a sort of real-time battle strategy game in which two sides do battle on your living room floor and you control the action from afar. But I will admit to spending most of my time with the lightsaber so far. It’s just too fun to put down.

Some will balk at the product’s $200 price tag, which is certainly fair. But you’re getting an impressive collection of technology in return and, way more important, a set of games that will give your kids—OK, you—hours of fun as well.

This is exactly the type of thing I dreamed about as a 10 year old whose life was changed forever by the original Star Wars. And while I certainly waited long enough to experience it, the wait was worth it: Star Wars: Jedi Challenges is incredible.

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In reply to karma77police: I find it super weird and hilariously off that some (many) on the web want to say what is THE FUTURE dominating device/tech as in, as if that would be a single solution for everything.

I don't get this at all, what is the train of logic if there is any to this way of thinking?

I mean when you look at the past and present, there is no single one device that controls everything and is used for everything.

There are many used for different use cases.

I thought by now,even those still wanting to believe in that one single device future and believing Steve Job type talks about now a single device like the iPad being that one device should have woken up and realized after over 7 years: no, there is no such single device and there won't be, because different form factors are better suited for different use cases.

An iPad is great for on the go/relaxed mode usage, but as soon as i want to run a highend desktop level 3D game or a high end 3d modelling app, a game engine, my coding tools or just type more than 1000 words, it is painful and not the right type of device for the task at hand.

People don't give up on all their laptops and desktops and phones for an iPad.

Nor do they all give up on their tablets, laptops and desktops for their phones.

Yes, some do, but that is actually not the majority, the majority uses a mix of different devices for different use cases.

And is actually the case that the average household now has a much broader mix of devices than 10 years ago, not a smaller one.

Why should that be any different in the future?

Yes, holographic devices projecting things in the room will be a thing in the future (many even if still limited and expensive options already exist in early days form now), but that will not take away use cases for where a headset/glasses makes sense, because there still will be many for those, too.

Wanting to predict a future where there is only place for a single device and all others would be gone because only that single solution would be the solution for all use cases is just ridiculous.

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Regarding the field of view, is it as wide or wider than HoloLens, as well as higher vertically, or is it more like they rotated the field of view by 90 degrees to increase the vertical aspect, which is required for those light sabre battles?